Food Labels

     I believe people need to take the time to read and understand food labels. I am going to give you the basics to help you know what to look for and how it all works so that it hopefully makes sense.

(Here is a random food label I found to use as an example)

Let’s start with serving size you will usually see it first it’s right on the top (usually in cups).  This label says the serving is one cup, but notice under that it says “servings about two”, that means this packet or food has about two servings in it, two cups. That is important because when you go to the calories it says 250, but that is for ONE serving, which means because this food has two servings in it you need to either measure out the one cup or know that you are consuming 500 calories, not 250.

That also goes for all the other numbers and percent’s on the label. For this particular food notice that the amount of sodium (salt) is 940mg, that is only for one serving, if you eat two (the whole thing) that is 1,880mg of sodium, way more then you are supposed to consume in a day. This label clearly belongs to some kind of savory food because of the amount of sodium it has. The amount of sodium is one of the most important things to look for when buying savory/salty foods. In turn when you are buying sweet foods (cereal, desserts, etc.) you need to keep an eye out for the amount of sugar it contains.

Recommended amounts:

 Sodium(Salt) - about 1,500 mg a day

Sugar -about 100 calories (25grams) for women a day; about 150 calories (37.5 grams) for men a day

The next thing to look at is the ingredient list. The first thing on the list is the main ingredient in the food. In this case it would be water. Two good tips to follow when reading the ingredients are, if you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it, and if it has more than FIVE ingredients (most of the time), don’t get it.

I challenge you to try to make some of the packaged foods you are looking to buy at home, I am sure you will like them better and they will make you feel better too!!  I hope these points will help you learn what you’re eating and to make better choices at the grocery store.  

Live Healthy,

 Nadia